Dover, Sherborn plug into energy efficiency programs

Thursday

Jul 28, 2016 at 12:01 AM

More than four in 10 communities have installed solar panels on at least one municipal property, and 86 percent have completed an energy audit of at least one city or town building in the past decade, according to Environment Massachusetts.

By Gerry Tuoti, Wicked Local Newsbank Editor

While energy policy debates continue in the Massachusetts House and Senate, many city and town governments are charging ahead with local efforts to boost the use of renewable power sources.

“In Massachusetts, we can get 100 percent of our energy from renewable sources,” said Ben Hellerstein, state director of the Environment Massachusetts Research and Policy Center. “We have enough wind and solar potential to meet our energy needs many times over … The good news is local communities are already taking action. Communities big and small in all parts of the state are moving to adopt clean energy and reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.”

More than four in 10 communities have installed solar panels on at least one municipal property, and 86 percent have completed an energy audit of at least one city or town building in the past decade, according to Environment Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, July 19, the nonprofit organization released a preview of its upcoming report, “Renewable Communities,” which will profile successful energy efficiency programs in several communities, including Melrose, Somerville, Newton, Arlington, Auburn and New Bedford. The full report, which will be released Aug. 4, will also profile the Cape and Vineyard Electric Cooperative.

Going solar in Dover, Sherborn

At last spring’s annual Town Meeting, Dover residents passed an article establishing a solar overlay district on a parcel, adjacent to the town’s transfer station, currently owned by Hale Reservation.

The Planning Board held a public hearing on the solar panel array proposal, which would be overseen by BlueWave, earlier this week. Information on this proposal is available on the home page of the town’s website, www.doverma.org.

Sherborn has been using its participation with the Green Community program to enact energy improvement programs, according to Town Planner Gino Carlucci via email/

“As a Green Community, we have received two Green Community grants totaling more than $200,000 for energy efficiency improvements in town buildings, Pine Hill School and the traffic light. The first group of improvements resulted in about a 16 percent reduction in energy consumption,” he wrote.

Although the town has no solar panels at its facilities, Carlucci hopes that will change soon.

“We are in the process of hopefully getting panels installed on the CM&D Garage through a regional procurement we participated in with MAPC. We had hoped to also put panels on the former landfill, but it is too small to attract interest.

A few years ago, residents took part in the Sherborn Solar Challenge. According to Carlucci, “About 30 systems were installed totaling about 240 kW of capacity. The Planning Board also approved a special permit amendment for ADESA, which allows car canopies to be installed in its parking lot with 4.2 MW of capacity, of which 82 percent will be in Sherborn and 18 percent in Framingham.”

Other examples

Martha Grover, the energy efficiency manager for Melrose, told reporters about steps her city has taken, including a recent initiative to convert all street lights to LED bulbs, which is expected to significantly decrease energy consumption.

She also described rooftop solar arrays at Melrose schools and a city program that encourages homeowners and businesses to install their own solar arrays. Last year, Melrose became the first Massachusetts city to adopt a green municipal aggregation program, resulting in 16 percent of its residents’ electricity coming from renewable sources.

According to Environment Massachusetts, more than 41 percent of Massachusetts cities and towns have installed solar panels on at least one municipal building or property, and more than 15 percent have installed geothermal, wind power or other renewable energy systems.

Additionally, more than 23 percent have participated in or created program to help residents and local small businesses install solar panels.

Hellerstein said Environment Massachusetts was offering an early preview of the Aug. 4 report in an effort to help shape the ongoing energy policy debate on Beacon Hill. Formal legislative sessions end for the year on July 31.

The preview included case studies of a handful of communities, including Arlington, Worcester and Holyoke. More communities will be profiled in the upcoming release of the full report, Hellerstein said.

The town of Arlington has solar panels on the roofs of six school buildings and retrofitted several schools with fault detection diagnostic systems, which identify large sources of wasted energy in real time, allowing building staff to act immediately. The systems discovered a previously undetected flaw that resulted in the air conditioner in one school being running constantly. In another building, the system alerted town officials that full heat had been on every night.

Arlington has begun entering a green municipal aggregation that will result in more residents getting power from renewable sources. The town also plans to upgrade its municipal fleet of cars to include alternative-fuel and electric vehicles. There are also plans to install more electric vehicle charging stations.

Ryan Wright, the founder of WrightGrid, said his company, which makes public solar-powered phone-charging stations and Wi-Fi hotspots, provides an example that renewable energy can come in many shapes and sizes.

Benjamin Weil, an assistant professor of building and construction technology at UMass-Amherst, said that while cities and towns can accomplish a lot on their own, they need partnerships with state and federal government. Those partnerships, he said, could result in permitting for offshore wind turbines, increasing transmission infrastructure to allow communities to draw power from larger areas and the adoption of a carbon tax.

“The fundamental thing is having a policy environment that encourages it,” he said. “There are a number of policy levels that have to be made at the state level to make their jobs easier at the local level.”

Hellerstein said he’s hopeful Massachusetts can get virtually 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources “in the next few decades.”

“It should go without saying that no city or town can do it alone,” he said. “We need support from the state level and national level to make it happen.”